LCHIEN
Photo Lamp Project
Well, this is not technically a woodworking project but I dove into it the same way.
THis was sort of my inspiration:
I have a 1950's tripod that belonged to my father that I used a lot as a kid to learn photography. I have a 2014 model Mirrorless camera that has failed and is beyond economical repair. And a bunch of slides from the 70s my late parents cruise vacations in the Pacific. People I don't know and locations I barely know. But I know it was their happy days, post retirement, kids gone or married.
The camera failed a few years back, but I still use all the lenses on my other cameras. So I appealed on the camera enthusiasts forum to see if anyone had a broken, non repairable lens to volunteer. I bought one from ebay for $10 and someone eventually sent me another.
I'm very familiar with cameras, they use a 1/4-20 stud on the tripod to mount the camera tripod socket. I was able to find a hotshoe to tripod adapter to put a 1/4-20 tripod mount on the top of the camera.
Lamps there are all kinds of lamp hardware and I found out they have all weird threads. The riser pipes are all hollow and they are 1/8" IPS straight hollow pipe thread with 27 TPI pitch and the top finial for the lampshade is 1/4-27, another odd thread. Turns out the Lamp industry happened before ASME, SAE and all other standards. Before the Turn of the century they started replacing gas lamps with electric, but they tended to used the old piping to run the cord and other existing hardware to mount the electrics and that's how the odd threads came about as lamp standards. So you have to deal with a shop that handles lamp parts. I used Grandbrass.com.
So the key part was a 1/4-20 to 1/8 IPS bushing to make the transition, after that I used standard lamp hardware.
I selected the slides and searched for a variety of scenes. Some have my parents in them, a nostalgic touch that makes this personal. There are a few pictures of the giant stone statues on Easter Island - Rapa Nui.
Other examples of slide lampshades the artists all drilled holes in four corners then used jewelry jump rings to connect. That was to me a massive labor effort and kind of floppy. I simply laid out a array or 19 W x 4 high and used straight edges to corral them snugly against each other. and then Taped the seams vertically then horizontally. from the inside of the cylinder. Such an arrangement can curve one direction and not the other. And when curved into a circle, the vertical joints become rigid.
I actually did 6W x4 twice and 7W x 4 once to make it more managable then joined the three sections together to make my 19x4 cylinder.
As expected the cylinder curved in one dimension and was rigid in the other with a whole lot less work than the jump ring method.
I assembled the lamp. I had a few disassemblies because I forgot to thread all the stuff onto the power cord in the right order.
The shade fit a 12" ring perfectly, which was partly luck because the slides are exactly 2" x 2 "; the slide cylinder circumference and the ring circumference were nearly perfect match so the ring sat just inside the slides. I had drilled the top and bottom row of the slides with a 1/8" hole centered on the edge and used 38 tiny zip ties to fasten them.
It turned out that the clear/bright areas of the slide allowed you to see the bulb and hardware inside, so I had to order some diffuser material and line the inside which helped enormously.
When I was done with the shade, I found I misjudged where everything would land an particularly that LED bulbs don't put much light downwards (whereas incandescents were glass and emitted ligth all the way to the base). So I had to get finial risers to raise the shade 2.5 inches.
All sorted out, I installed it on the vintage tripod.
I'm really happy how it turned out, looks cool and it has a lot of sentimental meaning for me, every single part - the tripod, the camera, and the slides.
This knob, they don't do stuff like that anymore. I have fond memories of this knob from my childhood. It's a Davidson Star D "Conquest" tripod.
THis was sort of my inspiration:
I have a 1950's tripod that belonged to my father that I used a lot as a kid to learn photography. I have a 2014 model Mirrorless camera that has failed and is beyond economical repair. And a bunch of slides from the 70s my late parents cruise vacations in the Pacific. People I don't know and locations I barely know. But I know it was their happy days, post retirement, kids gone or married.
The camera failed a few years back, but I still use all the lenses on my other cameras. So I appealed on the camera enthusiasts forum to see if anyone had a broken, non repairable lens to volunteer. I bought one from ebay for $10 and someone eventually sent me another.
I'm very familiar with cameras, they use a 1/4-20 stud on the tripod to mount the camera tripod socket. I was able to find a hotshoe to tripod adapter to put a 1/4-20 tripod mount on the top of the camera.
Lamps there are all kinds of lamp hardware and I found out they have all weird threads. The riser pipes are all hollow and they are 1/8" IPS straight hollow pipe thread with 27 TPI pitch and the top finial for the lampshade is 1/4-27, another odd thread. Turns out the Lamp industry happened before ASME, SAE and all other standards. Before the Turn of the century they started replacing gas lamps with electric, but they tended to used the old piping to run the cord and other existing hardware to mount the electrics and that's how the odd threads came about as lamp standards. So you have to deal with a shop that handles lamp parts. I used Grandbrass.com.
So the key part was a 1/4-20 to 1/8 IPS bushing to make the transition, after that I used standard lamp hardware.
I selected the slides and searched for a variety of scenes. Some have my parents in them, a nostalgic touch that makes this personal. There are a few pictures of the giant stone statues on Easter Island - Rapa Nui.
Other examples of slide lampshades the artists all drilled holes in four corners then used jewelry jump rings to connect. That was to me a massive labor effort and kind of floppy. I simply laid out a array or 19 W x 4 high and used straight edges to corral them snugly against each other. and then Taped the seams vertically then horizontally. from the inside of the cylinder. Such an arrangement can curve one direction and not the other. And when curved into a circle, the vertical joints become rigid.
I actually did 6W x4 twice and 7W x 4 once to make it more managable then joined the three sections together to make my 19x4 cylinder.
As expected the cylinder curved in one dimension and was rigid in the other with a whole lot less work than the jump ring method.
I assembled the lamp. I had a few disassemblies because I forgot to thread all the stuff onto the power cord in the right order.
The shade fit a 12" ring perfectly, which was partly luck because the slides are exactly 2" x 2 "; the slide cylinder circumference and the ring circumference were nearly perfect match so the ring sat just inside the slides. I had drilled the top and bottom row of the slides with a 1/8" hole centered on the edge and used 38 tiny zip ties to fasten them.
It turned out that the clear/bright areas of the slide allowed you to see the bulb and hardware inside, so I had to order some diffuser material and line the inside which helped enormously.
When I was done with the shade, I found I misjudged where everything would land an particularly that LED bulbs don't put much light downwards (whereas incandescents were glass and emitted ligth all the way to the base). So I had to get finial risers to raise the shade 2.5 inches.
All sorted out, I installed it on the vintage tripod.
I'm really happy how it turned out, looks cool and it has a lot of sentimental meaning for me, every single part - the tripod, the camera, and the slides.
This knob, they don't do stuff like that anymore. I have fond memories of this knob from my childhood. It's a Davidson Star D "Conquest" tripod.
Attached Files
Loring in Katy, TX USA
Comment